Negative X—Don't Add Water!

See the full video here:

[plasma]

"So how did fire even start in the first place? "

"I accidentally dropped water onto gray stuff"

[Alza.art]

“Negative X” sounds like some sort of resident evil virus

[J.l.JOE]

"Thus the powerpuff girls were born!!"

[davidlloyd]

Silver nitrate and aluminium powder also does the same….my chemistry teacher set a short quiz and the winner got to shoot at a pile of it with a water pistol! Went on to study chemistry at university too!

[predrik]

basically how this works:
Zn + NH₄NO₃
Zn could theoretically easily kick and replace NH₄ out of its partnership with NO₃, but unfortunately for it there isn't enough movement for Zn to have a chance of replacing NH₄
Adding H₂O, a pretty good solvent, makes NH₄NO₃ separate into its components, NH₄⁺ and NO₃⁻, which then start floating around in the H₂O, with the dissolution of NH₄⁺ being more relevant to Zn.
Zn itself doesn't become an ion just because of H₂O, but it can forcibly give NH₄⁺ an electron due to Zn's ability to make more stable ions than the neutral NH₄•. The equation for this is
Zn + 2(NH₄⁺) → Zn²⁺ + 2(NH₄•)
NH₄• isn't stable in this neutral form, which causes it to decay with the following equation:
2(NH₄•) → 2(NH₃) + H₂
The total formula, including the NO₃, is
Zn + 2(NH₄NO₃) → Zn(NO₃)₂ + 2(NH₃) + H₂
All this exchange produces a lot of heat, which can melt the Zn (420°C) and NH₄NO₃ (170°C). This allows for combustion of the released H₂ [2(H₂) + O₂ → 2(H₂O)] and combustion of the Zn without NH₄NO₃ [2(Zn) + O₂ → 2(ZnO)]. The molten state of the Zn and NH₄NO₃ allow for further reaction, even though the original H₂O should've long since evaporated.

tl;dr the video
edit: realized I accidentally wrote down the formulas for zinc(I) nitrate instead of zinc(II) (real) nitrate. This didn't change any of the explanations though, and only changed numbers by factors of 2.

[eeveeofalltrades]

"Now that I've added the catalyst, it's extremely unstable"

**proceeds to shake it**

[maukun]

Police: "so what happened ma'am?"

"I was just crying then my house starts buring"

[stephan]

One of my favourite experiments in the lecture...

[nintendokirby]

Instruction unclear, made three powerful girls

[thenamestails]

TheNamesTails discovered Weakness to Fire from Frost Salts

[Trash_PandaPrime]

“One crossed wire, one wayward pinch of potassium chloride, one errant twitch! AND KABLOOIE!”

[CoolockIRA]

Got flashbacks when he started crushing white rocks into powder😂

[HeisenbergFam]

Instructions unclear, I caused a fire to the entire county and now im in jail, cheers

[АртемМакєєв]

This is also the reaction, that happens with discord moderator's skin when he trying to shower

[erdngtn]

Interesting. One step away from making an advanced IED

[alvaroamarodeazevedo]

Maybe this is the secret of the ancient "greek fire" used in naval batles in antiquity. It was a mixture of unkown composition which set fire in contact with water.

[pradhanh]

I was waiting for you to say: I can't stop it

[thebluefriend]

I could hear the disappointment in his voice when the first fire didn't break out that great.

[saltycracker]

Hey man, I really dig your videos, and this automatically makes me think of an old story about a Greek warfare substance that I believe was referred to as "Greek Fire", which was(from what I can ascertain) a napalm-like goo that would further ignite when water was applied to it.. I would LOVE to see you do a video on this also; I dig your thorough yet summated style of presentation.

[hangry]

I like how he insinuates at the end that in a certain scenario we'd be leaning over the pile of chemicals and we would accidentally drool on it